Why I Study Seemingly Impossible Conflicts

Our ability to address seemingly intractable conflicts may very well
determine our capacity to survive as a species. Intractable conflicts are
defined as disputes that are highly destructive, enduring, and particularly
resistant to attempts to resolve them. Currently, about 40% of intrastate armed
conflicts have persisted for 10 years or more, with 25% of the wars being waged
lasting for more than 25 years. Although we are seeing more peace negotiations
than military victories these days, 25% of them relapse into violence within 5
years.

I became interested in studying enduring conflicts initially through my
experiences working as a counselor with violent urban youth in psychiatric
hospitals, and then through my work as a community mediator for the New York
State Criminal Courts and as an instructor in a course on preventative diplomacy
at the United Nations. As a doctoral student, I first began to conduct research
in this area focusing on "ripeness" (a readiness to negotiate). This often
entails a radical shift in intentions, attitudes, and behaviors (from
destructive to constructive), and is extremely difficult to achieve due to long
histories of animosity, suspicion, fear, and atrocities committed by many of the
parties involved. The literature suggested that in prolonged conflicts, ripeness
typically occurs as a result of the intense pain, suffering, and sense of dread
that accompanies a violent stalemate between the conflicting parties. However in
many intractable conflicts (particularly conflicts over "truth" and "justice"),
such suffering has the paradoxical effect of further entrenching the parties in
the conflict.

In response to this paradox, I began work on a more comprehensive model for
conceptualizing the shift toward constructive interactions in intractable
conflicts; initially developing a theoretical model that offered alternative
avenues to fostering ripeness through the application of basic Lewinian
principles of motivation and change. This model stressed the importance of
addressing obstacles or constraints to peaceful encounters, such as a lack of
trust, interpersonal contact, and safe channels for communication. Removing such
constraints can increase ripeness without the rise in intensity of conflict
associated with increases in pain and suffering.

However, as my understanding of various intractable conflicts deepened (such
as those regarding abortion or race relations in communities and the conflicts
in Cyprus and the Middle East), so did my awareness of their complex and dynamic
natures. In other words, I began to recognize that studying conflict at a single
point in time, or focusing on a single aspect (e.g. obstacles), was ultimately
problematic because it failed to capture the fact that conflict, particularly
intractable conflict, is multifaceted; involving multiple experiences and
encounters between many different parties over a variety of issues under diverse
conditions which change in time.

Thus, I embarked on a new approach to this work. It built on four basic
premises regarding contemporary conflict: 1) our world is becoming increasingly
more complex, ecologically, politically, economically, and socially, 2) human
systems are ever-changing and the pace of change is rising, 3) such complexity
and dynamism place extraordinary demands on our capacities to accurately
comprehend enduring conflicts, and 4) this often leads to oversimplification of
problems and an over-reliance on our primary frames of understanding, which are
useful but limited. For instance, if we reflect on many of the ethnopolitical
conflicts in the post Cold War world, we see a complex pattern of interlacing
schisms emerging– based on ethnicity, religion, economic well-being, population
density, environmental degradation, collapsed states, globalized markets, and
geopolitical shifts. Equally intricate patterns of discord can be found in many
of the protracted conflicts in our institutional, group, and personal lives.
Despite these trends, much of the research on intractability is either
fine-grained and piecemeal (focusing on independent cause and effect
relationships), or case studies of specific situations viewed through a
particular disciplinary lens. Similarly, our interventions, often informed by
such research, have limited or even unintended negative effects.

With funding from the James S. McDonnell Foundation and the Community
Foundation of Boulder, I began to convene a multidisciplinary team of experts
which developed a new theoretical model that connects prior research on
psychosocial coherence and complexity with basic differences in the underlying
dynamics of intractable versus more manageable social conflict (Coleman,
Vallacher, Nowak, & Bui-Wrzosinska, 2007; Nowak, Vallacher, Bui-Wrzosinska, &
Coleman, 2006; Vallacher, Coleman, Nowak, & Bui-Wrzosinska, 2010b; Vallacher,
Coleman, Nowak, & Bui-Wrzosinska, 2010a). The model employs concepts and methods
from dynamical social psychology- in particular the idea of attractors (patterns
in data that resist change) - and portrays intractable conflicts as those which
have lost the complexity and openness inherent to more constructive social
dynamics.

To date this project has resulted in over 40 publications and 45 conference
presentations by our team, publication of a new trade book (The Five Percent), a
proposal of a new scholarly book (The Gravity of Conflict), a special issue of
Peace and Conflict: The Journal of Peace Psychology showcasing dynamical-systems
theory applications to conflict research, development and publication of an
on-line computer visualization tool for working with intractability (Nowak, Bui-Wrzosinska,
Coleman, Vallacher, Borkovsky & Jochemczyk, 2010) and, with TC's Ed Lab, the
creation of several short introductory videos on intractable attractors (http://fivepercentbook.com).
We are also currently developing an executive education module in this area,
which will be completed in Spring, 2012.

ONE IN EVERY TWENTY DIFFICULT CONFLICTS ends up not in a calm
reconciliation or tolerable standoff but as an acute lasting
antagonism. Such conflicts -- the five percent -- can be found among
the diplomatic and political clashes we read about every day in the
newspaper but also, and in a no less damaging and dangerous form, in
our private and personal lives, within families, in work-places, and
among neighbors. These self-perpetuating conflicts resist mediation,
defy conventional wisdom, and drag on and on, worsening over time.
Once we get pulled in, it is nearly impossible to escape. The five
percent rules us.

So what can we do when we find ourselves ensnared? According to
Dr. Peter T. Coleman, to contend with this destructive species of
conflict we must understand the invisible dynamics at work. Coleman
has extensively researched the essence of conflict in his
"Intractable Conflict Lab," the first research facility devoted to
the study of polarizing conversations and seemingly unresolveable
disagreements. Informed by lessons drawn from practical expereince,
advances in complexity theory, and the psychological and social
currents that drive conflicts both international and domestic,
Coleman offers innovative new strategies for dealing with disputes
of all types, ranging from abortion debates to the enmity between
Israelis and Palestinians.

A timely, paradigm-shifting look at conflict, The Five Percent is
an invaluable guide to preventing even the most fractious
negotiations from foundering.

Peter T. Coleman, author of The Five Percent: Finding Solutions to Seemingly
Impossible Conflicts, is associate professor of psychology and education at
Columbia University, director of the International Center for Cooperation and
Conflict Resolution, and on the faculty of Teacher's College and The Earth
Institute at Columbia. In 2003, he received the Early Career Award from the
American Psychological Association, Division 48: Society for the Study of Peace,
Conflict, and Violence. He lives in New York.

For more information please visit
http://www.fivepercentbook.com, and follow the author on Facebook and
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